Imagining Abolition: Dr. Kwame Holmes discusses Akwaeke Emezi's novel 'Pet'
[video:https://youtu.be/U9mrq6oxdXM]
WGST Abolition Read
Monday, November 16th, 6 PM MST
What would a society without prisons look like??
Dr. Kwame Holmes led us in a discussion of Akwaeke Emezi’s young adult novel Pet, which seeks alternate visions for justice in a utopian world without prisons.
Kwame Holmes is Director of the Kingston Housing Lab, a Scholar-In-Residence in the Human Rights Project at Bard College, and Cohort Mentor for the Bard Baccalaureate program. He is a critical geographer, historian and cultural critic with a particular interest in the emotional politics of urban development and inequality.
For more information on the book Pet, please visit the author’s website at https://www.akwaeke.com/pet
To order the book, visit your local bookseller or library, or order online at: Bookshop | Indiebound |Powell’s | Boulder Bookstore
More Resources:
What is Abolition and why is it a feminist, queer and trans issue?
- What is the Prison Industrial Complex? What is abolition? A very short overview by the organization Critical Resistance, co-founded by Black feminist scholar activists Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Angela Davis, among other activists.
- Mariame Kaba, "Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police". NYT, June 12 2020.
- Victoria Law, "Against Carceral Feminism". Jacobin Magazine, 2014.
- Flow Chart: Disproportionate incarceration of low-income, trans and gender non-conforming people. Sylvia Rivera Law Project.
Activism on the CU Boulder campus
- Petition by Black women students calling for CU to divest from CUPD. 12 June 2020.
- "We Condemn Racist Police Violence". Statement by the Departments of Women and Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies at CU Boulder, following the police killing of Mr. George Floyd.
- #ScholarStrike: Divest to Invest in CU BIPOC. Video on CU BIPOC students' activism.